pb

Improved pbcopy/pbpaste for OSX

The standard pbcopy and pbpaste utilities can manipulate the plaintext clipboard but have no easy way of accessing the HTML pasteboard. This module and CLI tool provide a more convenient way to access the pasteboard from node.

Command-Line Tool Usage

To get data from a specific pasteboard:

$ npx pb [type]
$ npx pb -m <type>

To set a specific pasteboard, pipe data into pb:

$ get_data | npx pb -s [type]

To list available pasteboards:

$ npx pb -l

For example, to grab the contents of the HTML pasteboard and put it on the plaintext pasteboard:

$ npx pb -m html | npx pb -s

Library Usage

From node, pb exposes:

• get(type): get pasteboard data from specified pasteboard
• set(type, data): set pasteboard data (overwrites other pasteboards)
• available(): enumerate available pasteboards

This example gets the pasteboard HTML data and copies to plaintext pasteboard:

var pb = require('pb');
var HTMLOutput = pb.get('html');
pb.set('text', HTMLOutput);

Supported Pasteboards

type	description
NSStringPboardType	plaintext
NSHTMLPboardType	HTML
NSRTFPboardType	RTF

License

Please consult the attached LICENSE file for details. All rights not explicitly granted by the Apache 2.0 license are reserved by the Original Author.